Catholic Church snagged by 'the Geller Ban'

Exclusive: Pamela Geller explains why D.C. Metro barred Christmas ad

The Washington Times reported last Tuesday that "the Catholic church is taking Metro to court after the Washington-area transit agency rejected an ad campaign promoting a website aimed at encouraging attendance at parishes throughout the D.C. area." Why did the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority reject these ads? Because of the Geller Ban.

This goes back to June 2015, when my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), created a free-speech ad campaign defying the blasphemy laws under the Shariah. We put up 100 billboards around St. Louis, depicting the winning cartoon in our Muhammad cartoon contest that was fired upon by jihadis in Garland, Texas, under the headline, "SUPPORT FREE SPEECH." The cartoon depicted Muhammad being drawn by an artist. Muhammad says, "You can't draw me!" The artist responds: "That's why I draw you." It was an apt summation of the courage and refusal to be bullied that we need to have in the face of violent intimidation from Islamic jihadis.

The billboards featuring this Muhammad cartoon also went up in and around the northern tri-county area of Marion, Baxter and Boone counties in Arkansas. But in what could only called an end-run around the First Amendment, when we tried to run them in the Washington, D.C., subway, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) enforced the Shariah under the guise of banning all "political ads." No other ad had compelled WMATA to take such drastic action. My ads violating Islamic blasphemy laws led to Shariah bans in New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco et al.

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The ban itself is mutable and unclear. No contemporary medium of communication may pass the test of being merely commercial and non-political. The New York Times runs an editorial page every day – not to mention the slant of their "straight news" – and therefore, if they can advertise, so can the Village Voice, the Socialist Militant and Dabiq (ISIS' four-color magazine), for that matter.

The WMATA threw in public safety for good measure, as if these craven quislings knew what was conducive to the public good. Color me skeptical. They said the buses would be a target for jihadis. Yet if we've learned anything since 9/11, it is that America is the target. The West is the target for Islamic terrorism. Abridging our freedoms so as not to offend savages is surrender and un-American. It results in more demands, more surrender, more capitulation to Shariah law (which is what WMATA did).

Running and hiding is no strategy in a war. Operation Fetal Position is a recipe for disaster.

No one cared when my ads were banned, but it was never about me. The enemedia makes it about me, monsterizes me, so that people run in horror at the bogeyman and say yes, yes, shut her up, shut her down. It's covert totalitarianism.

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The Catholic Church, of course, would not have dreamed of sticking up for my free-speech rights at the time the Geller Ban first was put into place. But it's like the famous Martin Niemöller poem:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –Because I was not a Socialist.Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out –Because I was not a Trade Unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

Now they have come for the Catholic Church, and who will speak up for their free-speech rights?

What most people don't know is the Geller Ban is not unique to Washington, D.C. In fact, the Geller Ban is in effect in every major city in the United States: New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, liberal San Francisco, Denver and more.

So who will speak up for the other organizations that want to run perfectly reasonable ads, as mine were, and run afoul of this ban?